Joan Nowotny | |
---|---|
Born | 18 August 1925 Melbourne, Australia |
Died | 29 June 2008 Box Hill, Australia |
Nationality | Australian |
Occupation(s) | Dean, school principal, lecturer in philosophy |
Known for | First female dean of a theological institute in Australia |
Joan Nowotny IBVM (18 August 1925 - 29 June 2008) was an Australian academic and professor of philosophy. She became the first woman to lead a theological institution in Australia, when she was appointed the academic dean of Yarra Theological Union. [1]
Joan Nowotny was born on 18 August 1925 in Melbourne, Australia, the first-born child of Henry and Mary Nowotny. [2] Her father was a teacher who had emigrated from Vienna and settled in Australia, helping to found an orchestra in Perth. The family moved to Brisbane, Queensland, where Nowotny attended a convent school run by the Loreto Sisters. [3] [4]
After graduating from Loreto College in Brisbane, Nowotny pursued a career in teaching. Feeling called to the religious life, she made a profession of vows with the Loreto Sisters, known formally as the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and took the religious name Miriam. She served as a teacher in schools run by the order, including in Ballarat, and then in 1955, she was appointed principal of the Loreto school in Kirribilli. In 1957, she was transferred to Loreto Normanhurst, where she served as principal until 1965. [5]
Nowotny enjoyed reading and teaching philosophy, and decided to earn advanced degrees in the field. She traveled to Canada, to earn a Master of Arts in Philosophy at the University of Toronto. She then began a PhD program, also at the University of Toronto, which she completed in 1974. During her studies, she travelled to Paris and studied with Paul Riccoeur and John Paul Sartre. She wrote her doctoral thesis on Gabriel Marcel's philosophy; she had the opportunity to meet and interview him while in Paris. [5]
After completing her PhD, Nowotny served as principal at St Mary's College, Melbourne University. [2] She then lectured in Philosophy at the University of Tasmania, while also serving as principal of Ena Waite College, University of Tasmania. [2]
In 1980, she was appointed academic dean at Yarra Theological Union, a theological institute affiliated with the Melbourne College of Divinity. She was the first woman to hold the senior role of academic dean for any theological institute in Australia. She continued in this role until 1989. [2]
From 1991 to 2003, after a year-long sabbatical, she taught philosophy and was chair of the department at Yarra Theological Union. [2] In 1995, Nowotny co-edited a volume called Freedom and Entrapment: Women Thinking Theology, with Maryanne Confoy and Dorothy A. Lee. [6] Nowotny retired in 2003.
Beyond her academic pursuits, Novotny was a crossword enthusiast, and wrote puzzles for the magazine Eureka Street. [3]
Nowotny died on 29 June 2008 in Box Hill, Australia. [5]
The University of Divinity is an Australian collegiate university with a specialised focus in divinity and associated disciplines. It is constituted by twelve theological colleges from seven denominations and three schools. The University of Divinity is the direct successor of the second oldest degree-granting authority in the State of Victoria, the Melbourne College of Divinity. The university's chancery and administration are located in Box Hill, a suburb of Melbourne in the state of Victoria.
Loreto Kirribilli is an independent Catholic comprehensive single-sex primary and secondary day school for girls, located in Kirribilli, a Lower North Shore suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Trinity College Theological School (TCTS) is an educational division of Australia's Trinity College, the oldest residential college of the University of Melbourne. It is also one of the constituent colleges of the University of Divinity. The School provides theological education and shapes men and women for ordained and lay ministry in the Anglican tradition, as well as providing other programs of study, including higher degrees by research.
Loreto Normanhurst is an independent Catholic, primary and secondary day and boarding school for girls, located in Normanhurst, a suburb on the upper North Shore of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Dame Mary Dora Daly, was an Australian writer, humanitarian and charity worker.
Karen Soria is an American-born rabbi. She became the first female rabbi to serve in Australia when she joined the rabbinical team at Temple Beth Israel, a progressive Reform Jewish synagogue in Melbourne, in the 1980s. She later served as a chaplain for the U.S. Marines and the U.S. Navy; she was the first woman rabbi to serve in this capacity for the Marines, and the second in the Navy. After moving to Canada, she became the first woman rabbi to serve as a chaplain with the Canadian Forces.
Mary "Gonzaga" Barry was an Irish Catholic religious sister whose life work led to the establishment of Loreto Sister schools across Australia.
Diana Joan "Ding" Dyason (1919–1989) was a highly respected Australian lecturer and historian of medicine with major teaching and life-long research interests in public health and germ theory. She is most notable in the significant impact she had in her scholarly discipline. As a woman who firstly worked in the traditional roles of research assistant and demonstrator in the non-traditional discipline of science, Dyason progressed to become a leader at a major Australian university, overcoming barriers of gender and culture at a national and international level, receiving awards and honors in the process. She broke through the gender-based 'glass ceiling' in the academic workplace to establish and develop the new interdisciplinary field of study of the History and Philosophy of Science that brings together The Two Cultures of the sciences and the humanities.
Margaret Mary Manion was an Australian art historian and curator recognised internationally for her scholarship on the art of the illuminated manuscript. She published on Medieval and Renaissance liturgical and devotional works, in particular, on Books of Hours – the Wharncliffe Hours, the Aspremont-Kievraing Hours, the Très Riches Heures. She was instrumental in cataloguing Medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts in Australian and New Zealand collections. She was Herald Chair Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne from 1979 to 1995, also serving as Deputy Dean and Acting Dean in the Faculty of Arts, Associate Dean for Research, Pro-Vice-Chancellor from 1985 to 1988, and in 1987, the first woman to chair the university's Academic Board.
Joan Mitchell Montgomery was an Australian principal.
Colleen Anne O'Reilly is an Australian Anglican priest. She was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2021 in recognition of her significant service to the Anglican Church of Australia, and to religious education. O'Reilly has been a strong advocate for women's leadership in the Anglican Church and women's ordination since the 1970s and described by Muriel Porter as "the ‘mother' of the movement that was a key factor in bringing about the ordination of women through many years of determined struggle".
Marie Louise Uhr was an Australian biochemist and leader in the movement advocating for the ordination of women in the Catholic Church.
Edith Amelia Kerr was an Australian teacher, headmistress and Presbyterian missionary.
Isabelle Elizabeth Merry (1907–2000) was an Australian Congregational minister and chaplain at Queen Victoria Hospital in Melbourne, Victoria. She was the first woman accepted for theological studies at the Congregational College of Victoria. She was ordained to the Christian ministry in 1937, becoming the first woman to be ordained in the state of Victoria. She became a full-time chaplain at Queen Victoria Hospital in Melbourne, and was the first chaplain to be on the staff of a hospital in Australia. In 1976, she was awarded an OBE for her chaplaincy work.
Anne Pattel-Gray is an Aboriginal Australian theologian and author who is an expert on Black theology. She is a descendant of the Bidjara people of Queensland and was the first Aboriginal person to earn a PhD at the University of Sydney.
Maryanne P. Confoy RSC is an Australian religious Sister of Charity who has also been a teacher and scholar, working primarily in the areas of ministry and spirituality.
Claire Renkin is an Australian art historian and academic who has had a distinguished career as a scholar specialising in the areas of art history and spirituality.
Marita Munro is an Australian minister and academic who was the first Baptist woman to be ordained in Australia.
Janina Hiebel is a German-born biblical scholar now residing in Australia who works at the University of Divinity in Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests are in the period of the Babylonian Exile, particularly the book of the prophet Ezekiel.
Erin Gabrielle White is a feminist philosopher and theologian. As an author she contributed significantly to feminist scholarship in Australia. She was the founder of the Sydney Women-Church Group and one of the founding editors of Women-Church: an Australian journal of feminist studies in religion.